Charlene Williams just out of prison after serving many years as the accomplice to a serial rapist. The shadow of Charlene Williams falls on the sidewalk next to a 1973 school portrait of herself. Williams wanted her identity concealed. Chronicle Photo: michael Macor

Photo: MICHAEL MACOR

Charlene Williams just out of prison after serving many years as...

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CHARLENE 1/B/24OCT97/MN/UPI--CHARLENE AND GERALD GALLEGO.

CHARLENE 1/B/24OCT97/MN/UPI--CHARLENE AND GERALD GALLEGO.

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CHARLENE 2/B/24OCT97/MN/JT--Charlene Gallego is escorted by officers to Martinez courtroom to testify against her husband, Gerard Gallego, in a multiple murder case on January 10, 1983. CHRONICLE PHOTO BY JERRY TELFER

CHARLENE 2/B/24OCT97/MN/JT--Charlene Gallego is escorted by...

BAY AREA FOCUS -- Ex-Con Starts Life Anew / She lured victims for her serial-killer husband in late '70s

Charlene Williams is 41 now, an attractive woman in a sleek suit and light makeup. As she sipped a latte in a cafe one recent morning, she betrayed no hint of the woman she once was -- a 24-year-old who lured young women into the hands of her husband, serial killer Gerald Gallego.

Their crime spree, from 1978 to 1980, was one of the most chilling in recent history, making front- page news as the "sex-slave murders." With promises of parties or jobs, Williams persuaded women to get into cars with her so Gallego could play out brutal sex fantasies. He raped and killed nine women and murdered one young man before he and Williams were captured in 1980.

In her first interview since her release from prison this summer, Williams seemed determined to distance herself from the grisly crimes that put her behind bars for nearly 17 years and her husband on death row. But she knows she can never be free of them.

The memories are flooding back to her now like waking nightmares: innocent girls hammered to death, shot in the head, raped, bound, dumped in ditches. "It might be a word, a scent carried on a breeze, happening upon a certain location, and everything comes back," Williams said. "I have days when it takes all morning to get it together. The memories will be with me the rest of my life.

"And then there's the added element of looking over my shoulder."

Williams fears for her life, saying that Gallego has a contract out on her for testifying against him. So she spoke cautiously, refusing to disclose which state she lives in, what kind of work she is doing or what relationship she has with the son she delivered in prison three months after her arrest. (The boy, now 16, was raised by Williams' parents.)

She wouldn't allow a newspaper photographer to take even an unrecognizable silhouette of her, and she balked, too, at the photographer taking her attorney's picture, fearful that she could be traced through him.

The threats on her life turned her release from the Nevada Women's Correctional Facility on July 17 into a scene from a TV movie. A female deputy dressed as Williams boarded a van outside the prison at 8 that morning as a decoy to journalists and others waiting in the parking lot.

But Williams had already been taken at 6 a.m. to a secret location known only to her attorney, who had been notified of the plan the night before. The warden kept the time and location of Williams' release a secret from all but the handful of deputies who escorted Williams and her attorney out of the county.

For the first few weeks, she stayed with friends she knew from church long ago. "She felt a little lost for a while," said her attorney, Joseph Murphy of Sacramento. "She didn't know anybody except the friends from church. Before she got out, prison officials asked her how she thought it would be on the outside. And she said she didn't know. Being with Gallego, she felt she had never been a free adult woman."

Williams agreed to The Chronicle interview, then, in a panic, canceled just minutes before it was to begin. Murphy calmed her, and an hour later she arrived at the cafe with him. Despite the warm day, Williams kept a coat pulled tightly around her. She said she wanted to do the interview so she can help women who are victims of abusive men. After nearly two decades of counseling, that is how she sees herself, as a victim rather than a criminal.

"When I first went to prison, I truly believed I deserved the death penalty," she said, "even though there was no evidence against me. I knew somebody had to take responsibility for everything, and I knew he wouldn't."

Now, she says, and her attorney agrees, that what happened to her could happen to any woman who is physically and emotionally abused by a manipulative man. Williams recounted how charming and gentlemanly Gallego was when she met him on a blind date, set up through an acquaintance. He didn't even try to kiss her, and he sent flowers the next morning.

Williams was 20 years old at the time, the only child of an upper- middle-class couple who gave her a life of violin lessons and after- school clubs. She was working as a journeyman meat wrapper, operating her own flower and glassware boutique (a graduation present from her parents, she says) and taking classes at Sacramento State. But she felt like a failure. She had already seen one marriage end in an annulment and another in divorce. Gallego made her feel special.

Williams says she didn't know that Gallego, 10 years her senior, had spent 3 1/2 years in prison for robbery and had been charged with rape, incest, auto theft and assault with a deadly weapon. She also didn't know that his father had died in the Mississippi gas chamber in 1955 for killing two law officers.

"He portrayed to my parents that he was a super family guy," Williams said. "But soon it was like being in the middle of a mud puddle. You can't see your way out because he eliminated things in my life piece by piece, person by person, until all I had around me were members of his family, and they're all like him, every one of them. . . . Prison was freedom compared to being with him."

When the rapes and killings began, Williams said, she didn't escape because she believed Gallego would have hunted her down, even if she turned to the police. "There were victims who died and there were victims who lived," she said. "It's taken me a hell of a long time to realize that I'm one of the ones who lived."

The families of the murder victims -- some of whom harbored more hatred toward Williams than Gallego during the trials -- are not likely to accept such a claim, nor this one from Murphy, her lawyer: "Under the control of a madman like Hitler, the German people did things they would never have dreamed of doing on their own. She was in that kind of situation."

After their arrests, Williams agreed to testify against Gallego in exchange for the minimum first- degree-murder sentence of 16 years and eight months in both Nevada and California, with the sentences to run concurrently. (She pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in California and one count of second-degree murder in Nevada.)

Nevada was ready to release Williams six years ago for good behavior, but California officials threatened to arrest her on other charges if she didn't serve the full sentence. She feared going to a California prison, believing that Gallego had stronger connections there in which to carry out his threats. So she pleaded guilty to another second-degree murder charge so Nevada could keep her an additional six years.

While in prison she studied a wide range of subjects, from psychology to business to Icelandic literature. "She's a pretty intellectual woman," said Nevada District Judge Richard Wagner, who was the lead prosecutor in Gallego's Nevada trial. "She has a phenomenal mind, which made her a tremendous witness. . . . She had almost a photographic memory about the victims, down to their shoes and clothes."

Williams says she wants to put her studies and experience to use. She wants to advise law enforcement officials and judges on dealing more compassionately with battered women. She wants to lecture women's groups once she feels safer from Gallego threats. Yet she's vague about how, exactly, she can help prevent other women from walking the same horrific path she did.

Perhaps we ought to establish a hotline like 911 just for battered women, she said, although she admitted that she would have been too fearful to have called it herself. Or perhaps, she said, she can give women warning signs to watch for, although she said Gallego took such quick control of her that warning signs probably wouldn't have helped.

But she feels a need to do something.

"(Gallego) didn't kill me. I didn't get the death penalty. God for some reason decided I needed to be here," she said. "And it's to help other people. The past can't be undone, but the future can be helped."

The adjustment to her new life has been a slow process. She had trouble sleeping. She has felt alone and out of place. But she found a clerical job, learned how to drive again, updated her clothes and hairstyle. She has managed to knit together an appearance of normality. She believes completely that the normality will, one day soon, be real.

"I know I have a purpose, and when somebody has a purpose, it makes life meaningful," Williams said. "And it's not a self-serving purpose. That's important, too."

THE GALLEGO/WILLIAMS CRIME SPREE

For two years, Charlene Williams and Gerald Gallego committed a series of gruesome murders in California and Nevada.

THE KILLINGS

Kippi Vaught and Rhonda Scheffler, 17, both of Sacramento, were kidnapped on Sept.11, 1978 from a shopping mall. Their bodies were found two days later in a field east of Sacramento.

Brenda Lynn Judd, 13, and Sandra Colley, 14, kidnapped in Reno on June 24, 1979. Their bodies were never found.

Linda Aguilar, 21, of Oregon, hitched a ride with Gallego and Williams on June 7, 1980. Her body was found two weeks later in Gold Beach, Ore.

Virginia Mochel, 34, of West Sacramento, was kidnapped on July 17, 1980 from the parking lot of a bar where she worked. Her body was found in nearby Clarksburg (Yolo County).

Stacy Redican and Karen Chipman Twigs, both 17 and from Citrus Heights, Calif., raped and beaten to death with a hammer in April 1980. Their bodies were dumped in Nevada.

Craig Miller, 22, and Mary Beth Sowers, 21, were kidnapped after a Sacramento State fraternity dinner on Nov. 2, 1980. Their bodies were later found in the foothills east of Sacramento.

THE ARRESTS

Gallego and Williams arrested on Nov. 17, 1980, in a Western Union in Omaha, Nebraska.

Charlene Williams delivers baby while in jail on Jan. 18, 1981.

WILLIAMS CONFESSES

Williams confesses in July 1982 that she helped in 10 murders and strikes a deal with district attorneys in California and Nevada in exchange for testifying against Gallego.

CALIFORNIA TRIAL

Gallego trial begins in Martinez in November 1982. Gallego found guilty on April 12, 1983, after the jury deliberates for three days. Jury recommends the death penalty for Gallego May 1983.

NEVADA TRIAL

The second trial for Gallego begins May 1984. Jury takes two hours to find him guilty of first degree murder in June 1984. He is sentenced to death, but continues to appeal his sentence.

WILLIAMS' RELEASE

Williams released from prison on July 17, 1997, exactly 16 years and 8 months from her arrest.